The DWMoonwad Club plays: some maps that are set on the moon

LadyMistDragon · April 23, 2022

Finally, I've got some time for at least Map 07, the one I knew would take forever.

Lunar Laceration

Map 07: Moon Fortress

I have no idea why there's a gothic fortress on the moon. Why would you do this when there's no reason to have anything but UAC bases? Is this some different moon entirely? This is just a perfect case of environmental storytelling raising far more questions than it answers. I guess the title is just supposed to be a clue by itself.

Anyway, you're immediately assaulted by plasma troopers and black Demons, which basically manages to set the tone for the rest of the map. But don't get me wrong. You may encounter a Cyberdemon preacher in an unholy chapel but this goes down far easier than you might expect. One of the hardest fights is probably in the circular set of red-hewn stairs. Chaingunners start teleporting in, than Imps and then Hell Knights and Barons. This fight killed me more than any other, probably because carving enough space to switch your weapon out when appropriate is the hugest challenge here. It was kind of a mini-version of a late Going Down fight and I couldn't get enough of it. Though I did die two other times before this, once to that nasty outside suicider (yes, I'm using a Bushism, deal with it) trap and once to an Arch-vile not too long after that I couldn't get away from. That's until I reached the sort of closed corridor with no health or ammo in sight after the Cyberbruiser and....I may have felt a a touch disgusted here, but it's safe to say that my restart was entirely accidental. No way was I going to play through everything again though. I did check out the remaining areas though and it seems like there might be an epic fight in the demonic spa from whence you exit the level, but none appeared because I guess I broke a few scripts or whatever. Still, I guess finnks had tons of fun making this if nothing else. I'm just not in the greatest of moods right now. I think this is probably the best map so far, even if the Invulnerability was perhaps a touch too cryptic for me to find - or else the key was where I restarted, you never know...

lmd_lunar1-Map07.zip

sandwedge · April 23, 2022

Well unfortunately been a bit slow in updating these, but I'll try to finish them all this month. 3rd should be up in not too long. Anyway, as you can see I really enjoyed the second one...

Yeah, I haven't actually read other opinions in the thread, I shall see to that, but I really hated this one. Yes it's going for different ideas, but personally I come to doom for action so I already don't like puzzle focused wads. This was a puzzle focused wad, but it wasn' t really looking for switches as much as just figuring out where the hell to go and what enemies to avoid, where to get ammo (which is tight), where to get the rad suit etc. It's generally hard to navigate and made me feel miserable. If you get lost, you're going to start taking damage from the outside as well. Basically I just had to save a lot to make this not drag on too long. Also, it tried to use some weird room on room stuff which not only makes it more hard to navigate with the map, with tons of annoying elevators that may travel up to several floors which you just have to try out, but led to some bizarre scenes where I flip to and from different realities where a door is closed/open and imps are there/not there at the same time. So these weird quantum glitches added to my general disorientation and unease. The plasma gun sounds and effects that this author got off another CD are pretty cheesy too. I mean, it all has a general 1999 feel of someone trying something different within a pretty bad era for long, tedious wads.

I think some of the principles here could be interesting to explore, as a lot of puzzle maps just end up being switch hunting or something, whereas this is genuinely a puzzle in figuring out where to go. But even something well made (which this did get actual good reviews anyway) would probably still not be for me because doom without interesting combat feels like soap without water.

Anyway I'll be doing Man on the moon next which is actually great because it was updated recently.

Edited April 23, 2022 by sandwedge

LadyMistDragon · April 24, 2022

Map 08: Fuck It, Let's Blow Up the Moon

So how was your decision to destroy the moon arrived at anyway? Why would you want to blow up that precious gray orb that lays in the background of the night sky, that object that has been a beacon of light in the darkness? And why would anybody put in a self-destruct device on the moon anyway. Ah well, it doesn't really matter too much. The rough opening was probably the main reason I didn't decide to do this yesterday. The good news is that this actually goes by almost as quick as it possibly could, with the need to get out after 3 minutes once you reach a certain point. The hardest regular map possibly, with a Cyber that's probably meant to test your 2-shot bfg skills. A suicide bomber awaits for anyone who thinks they can exit quickly. Combat increases in intensity the further that you get in, culminating in a massive showdown with a marshmallow party's worth of Arch-viles along with several of their ornery bone solider buddies. I missed the backpack secret in the bomb room, but in a map like this, who cares? Blast through the intimidating mass of kamikaze, shoot some more Arch-viles and if possible, kill the Cyberbruiser tower guards. You won't have much time (and possibly ammo) for the Mastermind hidden behind the elevator entrance. Then finally, when you think you've escaped, a Cyberdemon comes to block your path to the exit. No, this did not make me better at 2-shotting, and that's only partly that I'm just starting to recover from a damn cold right now.

Final Thoughts

One of the first MBF21 wads, Lunar Laceration immediately makes an impact for those who crave the sort of high-octane combat of Speed of Doom and 180 Minutes Por Vivre while also mixing things up with Skillsaw-esque streamlined monster ambushes and mobs underscored by the JRPG soundtrack used here. This is probably a touch more difficult than either of those. The sheer sadism displayed here is not for the light-hearted. Turn down the difficulty if you must, because this might be nearly as much of a showcase for MBF21 (just look at those advanced gore effects!) as any wad could be.

lmd_lunarl_map08.zip

NiGHTS108 · April 24, 2022

MAP03: Venturing Outside

Kills: 83%

Items: 70%

Secrets: 0%

Time: 5:35

Another pretty standard map with a hub structure, Venturing Outside does manage to turn the heat up a little, introducing yet another custom enemy to this wad in MAP03, being a simpler looking Eviternity Nightmare Demon, he’s alright overall, I’ll never get used to Pinkies taking more than a rocket but it’s fine, my favourite fight definitely comes at the end, the chaingunners and plasma marines are placed pretty strategically, it's fun, but I do enjoy how well the main area of this map flows together, despite the fight-by-fight design, it actually feels pretty natural, not like I can make more organic layouts either way :p

Grade: B

Difficulty: C+

MAP04: Habitation Zone

Kills: 90%

Items: 48%

Secrets: 0%

Time: 4:15

Oh boy MAP04, easily the most exciting one so far, it introduces what I think are the last two custom enemies, a dark green Imp who throws Baron projectiles, and the iconic Cybruiser seen in every single wad literally ever, cramped as they are I actually enjoy the two building fights, the Arch-Viles in the first one will successfully keep you on your toes, and the second building contains an all you can eat buffet of demons to kill, don't step outside on the upper deck unless you're ready to deal with Arch-Viles and Chaingunners with relatively limited cover, look out for the Arch-Viles that can be surprisingly deadly at the exit to leave this firecracker of a map!

Grade: A-

Difficulty: B-

sandwedge · April 24, 2022

Ayo, got a new one hot off the moon presses. Want to get these single maps out of the way before I get to the mapsets, although this map is so big it could qualify as a short mapset tbh. Thankfully it is well worth time!

From the vid description:

Played blind in GZDoom (MBF compatibility) on Ultraviolence. And what a map we have here, my dear Yugiboy! ;-) This came out further back but was updated for 2021, and hence it is the best and most modern, polished map I've played in this moon series. It's absolutely sprawling and filled with little tricks and traps. You have to go down 3 different paths for the necessary keys and each path has tons of cool and, perhaps, not so cool ambushes. Visually it not only captures a great moonbase feel but also has some cool touches that remind me of stuff like Ancient Aliens (which is appropriate for a moon map). I was not able to find the optional GREEN key, that's right, there's an extra key thanks to MBF. Good luck finding it though, as the author probably made it optional in his update because it's quite cryptic. That means I have to go into the final battles without a BFG, however thankfully it is quite doable in that regard. I probably would have had more fun with the BFG though. :-(

Additional thoughts: I do like the way the moonbase opens up to some surrounding caverns and such, I always love that kind of sprawling techbase and natural environment feel. Some of the paths are just relentless ambushes and switches everywhere, but for the most part the ambushes are well designed and interesting so I think it all adds up to positive. The green key seems a bit too cryptic, and some of the secrets since even the computer map doesn't help you when they're hidden from that too. This is a massive map and I almost wonder if it would be better to break something like this into several maps, since it has several paths that are fairly separate, but it is varied enough that it works as one large piece. I'm honestly just glad this was updated so recently as the 2 decades since the last moonwads I played obviously makes a TON of difference to the design philosophy. I'm looking forward to the finnks and skillsaw ones to really see moonbases done at high quality, though this map actually had some skillsaw type touches, especially the ancient aliens type floor accents and such. Hopefully I can close out the next single map soon and finish the mapsets in the coming week!

NiGHTS108 · April 25, 2022

MAP05: Moonbase Blitz

Kills: 89%

Items: 75%

Secrets: 0%

Time: 11:42

I feel a bit conflicted on Moonbase Blitz, it absolutely destroyed me in this recording here, but going back to it after this I don't feel it's as painful as I portrayed, there's a decent amount of things that annoy me here, I'm not a fan of the cramped room with Pain Elementals, Rocket Guys and Suicide Bombers for a start, as it doesn't feel comfortable using rockets or the SSG in this case, the shootout with the non-secret plasma rifle is okay, but I didn't feel there was quite as much health here as there should have been, and also I kinda hate those stupid Cybruisers at the start, they aren't like the Speed Of Doom MAP05 Mastermind that actively plays a role in the map at large, it's just sometimes they can randomly see you and get a rocket in and it can be annoying, most of the other fights are okay but I do like the yellow key fight a fair bit (more now, since I know what's coming)

Grade: B-

Difficulty: B+

Also apparently the secret exit may or may not be here and I didn't get it so we can come back to that...

MAP06: Searing Core

Kills: 70%

Items: 88%

Secrets: 0%

Time: 4:01

One last meek Tyson map before the final act, Searing Core has a mere 62 enemies to its name and gives you a berserk right off the bat to get pounding! Funny enough one of the hardest parts is probably the beginning, lots of turret plasma guys and Revenants with some Psycho Imps on the ground right when you start, I suggest pistoling them instead, it won't last forever, you will get an SSG quickly, but it's mostly just to deal with the semi-annoying lava island fight as ammo for it is relatively tight, but also funny enough you will get a BFG too for the yellow key fight! I suggest getting the Cyberdemon down in two blasts, then saving a shot for the Revenants, of course I didn't do that because I was too busy running away like a bi-

Grade: B

Difficulty: C+

Dusty_Rhodes · April 25, 2022

Lunar Laceration by Finnks13

Map01: Crash Landing

Played on Ultra Violence in Woof! on complevel 21

Talk about a hot start wheeze

Jokes aside this is a solid opener, showing competent usage of the new textures as well as a few regular ones and a great grasp on lighting. I'm a big fan of that high contrast shading, so it's good to see it. Finnks often complains to me that he makes his levels too hard, but this one was pretty straightforward and not all that difficult. The traps kept things lively and I really enjoy the dehacked work and pistol sound effect replacement. The level mostly consists of finding the red key to move forward. The level leads you to it efficiently and doesn't waste your time. Overall, solid fun and interesting opener.

Map02: Biolab

Okay, ramping up the difficulty is the larger count of shotgunners and plasma guys (which have a different sprite than I'm used to. I prefer it to the ones I've seen). There's also another new enemy, who I'm dubbing the Serious Sam Dude. No way that isn't the sound effect from Second Encounter heh. Anyway, this level also has really straightforward progression but that's certainly not a bad thing; I really enjoy the punchiness of it. I really enjoy the textures here, and I'm sure they're from Valiant, which means they're probably from a Nick Backer tex pack or CC4 or something but they remind me of Eternal Doom which makes me happy. Really cool moon base, I'm hoping there's more of these in the rest of the wad.

Side note, the music picks are excellent. I'll be playing more tomorrow.

baja blast rd. · April 26, 2022

Man on the Moon by Yugiboy85

When it comes to fidelity and intensity, Man on the Moon so far is the pinnacle of the type of moon map established by Lunatic and Valiant, which emphasizes sleek and shiny abstraction, and fast-paced violent gameplay, over the more oldschool "representative" look of the '90s/'00s maps we've played in this club. Compared to skillsaw's work it really dials the intricacy of the construction up a notch. The wild irregular shapes if anything start to approach tourniquet's Miasma in complexity (which along with Ancient Aliens is a work that seems to have some bits of DNA in this somehow). Although that's without Miasma's uniform devotion to sector gradient lighting; we're on a moon after all so there has to be directional lighting.

So four keys, 1600 monsters; it can feel overwhelming, right? Not as much as one might think. For one thing, the nonlinearity is a lot more the "skillsaw" sort than more maze-like twists and turns, and you have two helpful "hub" areas around which progression hinges. The rocket launcher is your main tool -- there are stretches where you're pretty much living at full backpack capacity -- but different routes also supply you with various amounts of super shotgun ammo and plasma. So the alternate routes are largely interchangeable in what order you tackle them. I have played this twice for the club, and around twice in various forms before this year, and I don't think I noticed a huge difference in how order affecting resources and survivability...until I stumbled into the red "microslaughter"-themed zone, which has you holding off the most dense and meaty hordes in the map, while low on rockets. So don't do that. (Luckily there are tons of rockets laying around on the lunar ground somewhere, and plenty of secrets to scope out if you exhaust those.) It does still make a difference in the feeling of exploration. In my initial playthroughs I was drawn to digging into the hidden darker reaches (yellow key or red key) first, but it's a cool feeling on replays to dig around the more obvious bits, knowing that mysteries still lay uncovered.

My favorite key region is the blue zone, which occupies the southwest corner of the map. It's really fluid and smoothly flowing -- all rocket-spamming, strafe running, exciting sandwich traps, and juicy hordes of imps and heavy-hitters to take out. It artfully loops back through the start area, and then loops around once again into the first outdoor yard hub. Choreography is varied and clever: ranging from simple drop-floor battles where you have to hold off a gang of mancubi that might surround you, to scenic battles where a gang of revenants with an archvile mixed in team up with hitscanners while a row of hell knights streams at you from the other side.

This region also exemplifies something any mapper can learn from Man on the Moon: while it's easy to give a lot of credit for the map's fun to its willingness to throw lots and lots of imps and zombies at you, Yugiboy consistently contrasts the popcorn hordes with exciting, hectic close-quarters bouts employing a lower number of bigger threats, and also more perilous bits of "micro slaughter" -- which you can think of as the two other ends of Doom's trinity of visceral enjoyment. There are staged setpieces and but also traps meant to be escaped from ("cheesed"). There are even sections where health attrition might be the main danger -- right after the circular arena fight at the four-zone juncture, I was low on health with hitscanners around and turret mancubi and arachnotrons. So even though Man on the Moon isn't shy about relaying what exactly it's going for, even though the rocket launcher is probably the weapon you have out 2/3rds of the time, there is a lot more variety to what is going on than immediately meets the eye. The "big picture" thing the gameplay does well is employing deliberate approaches to monster design and placement, rather than sort of aimlessly winging it. (The small picture thing of course is "is fun.")

The regularity of form is also good at tipping the player off about what to expect; for example, every key path terminates on a very claustrophobic encounter that springs seemingly out of nowhere, so you know not to let your guard down.

As you approach the end, the big clumps of imps and zombies feel more and more like colonies of different species of animals, especially that big platoon of imps on the bridge. The end fight is a suitably climactic arena battle that combines the different types of choreography and monster use employed up to this point: timed fights, juicy cannon fodder, heavy-hitting micro slaughter, and unsurprisingly it's all overseen by cyberdemons and archviles. With the BFG and insight about what was upcoming, I went around pressing switches at their soonest availability instead of ever stopping to mop up, and got the boss monster and the two cyberdemons fighting, which certainly makes that part a lot easier. Man on the Moon's ethos is about "pedal to the medal" fun, so that sort of "exploit" if you can even call it that doesn't read as off-type.

For my liking, Man on the Moon has one tendency I'm not a fan of that has crept into big abstract modern maps: some areas are cluttered with all different types of switches, some of which are placed haphazardly on any available surface rather than where the player's attention naturally converges or is guided to. It looks very off, and the disarray makes some switches potentially easy to miss. I'm guessing this happens sometimes because the complexity of an area, all the fights it contains and routes you can go off on, sometimes grows out of a control. One solution if that is judged a problem is to backtrack design a bit and use more walkover triggers for the initial battles there. Another solution might be to have more "intentionality" in the switch spam, like maybe design control panels and such. I guess maybe Yugiboy loves switches though. :P The secrets sometimes have arbitrary-feeling rewards too. One might give you a free mega, while another might have you working hard for a mega you can't keep; one push-switch secret contains a berserk you don't really need, and there's an invul sphere secret that you mostly have to use on the archviles that spawn in to guard it.

Curiously there are like 3 or 4 different lighting strategies applied throughout, ranging from directional lighting to soft sector gradients and shadows to harsher directional lighting emanating from wall details. If you're a stickler for cohesive lighting schemes, it doesn't always make sense but the map gains a lot in mood from how shadowy and sultry it gets; I think lighting doesn't have to be perfectly coherent to a big positive. It's mostly a bright map, but some of my favorite areas in it are the darkest and gloomiest.

Other cool shit: skybox, the "rocket" at the start (which I believe is how you got here in the first place, from the prequel map "Traveling to the Moon"), the boat at the end (which is also amusing to me -- an alien sea canoe), the one-off sliding door at the start, and the zombie reskins, which are very well chosen.

There are plenty of dedicated multiplayer-only spawns, which increase the number of cybers and archviles (and also add spheres and ammo suited for multiplayer), so I am actually considering a "UV-plus" playthrough at some point.

The send-off captures the map's spirit in a bottle: just a bunch of zombies for you to BFG. (Also an archvile and a boat.) NiGHTS108 has me feeling like grading things too.

Difficulty: challenging, with high potential for lethality, but accessible and forgiving... idk, I guess that's around an "A" I think. (Might be a half-grade lower if the BFG were freely available.)

Grade: Hmm, I have no idea how to use letter grades in Doom so I'll just cheat. The 2018 version got a runner-up in that year's Cacowards (and this version is somewhat better than that one). If I had to translate to intended grades, at "full project" scope (an typical episode or longer), a modern-day Cacoward is either an A+ (probably around 3-6 of the mains) or an A; a runner-up is an A or an A- (half-half or so); and a smaller general mention (like last year's 21 for 21) is probably going to be A- or B+ (probably half-half)...or, more rarely, something lower than a B+ that is really "interesting." Smaller releases, like standalone maps, need to be better on average -- comparable to the highlights of a similar larger project. So grade (normalized for project size): A; grade (for individual map): A+.

Yugiboy85 · April 26, 2022

Thank you very much for that excelent write-up. I was really looking forward to it :)

On the subject of switches, the main reason i resulted to using these is honestly because i was kinda lazy in the sense that i didn't want to go through multiple voodoo based fights. I guess i also wanted the player to control the fights as they wanted but i do admit that i may have went a little overboard haha

on the secrets: yes, i do agree. The invuln is probably the only one that i would take out in hindsight. I tried to make it more interesting than the 2018 version (which i think only had it in the revenant alcove) but, i guess it's still kinda meh and not very useful because, you will run out pretty soon. I guess you could use it a bit for other areas but yeah.

The megasphere you mentioned that you cant really keep im guessing is the one in the hell knight/baron fight. The megasphere isn't really the reward here, it's more the plasma gun that you get at the end. It's meant to be an early way (the secret is accessive before you open up the big circular hub) of getting the pg without having to go through the different keyed areas :)

Anyhow, glad you enjoyed it. Im working hard on my mapset rn so, unfortunately, part 3 is kinda on hold for now but, it's still comming :)

Also, thank you both to @NiGHTS108 and @sandwedge for your video playthroughs. They were awesome to watch :)

Edited April 26, 2022 by Yugiboy85

LadyMistDragon · April 26, 2022

(I decided to forego demos for both of Krause's maps since there supposedly isn't much to bother with)

Dark Star by Michael Krause

Now here's something a little different! You're on some asteroid with red rock lining your path, and some lava-esque stuff on the ground. Probably best not to think about what idiocy the UAC is up in the rush to extract this place's valuable cargo. Anyways, the entrance to the base cuts quite a sight. Blue columns connected by silver railings give this place the appearance of an epic entrance. A screenshot on a billboard to the left shows at least to some extent what you're in for. Unfortunately, there's little in the interior that can really be commented on. There's just lots of long and open spaces stacked with crates and there's really little else to place. Combat may not necessarily be hard, but I did have a difficult time getting a foothold, partly because of the chaingunners, partly because of other enemies possibly sneaking up on you and partly because the Super shotgun can be hard to acquire of you're not fully aware of everything happening here. After that, the main struggle was just to remain alert.

That's a critical skill when dealing with the numerous admittedly small teleport ambushes. Idk why chaingunners would teleport from the top of some generators to the bottom, but I'm sure it represents something. The perpetually teleporting Arch-vile in the YK room was definitely either the largest problem or one of the more interesting challenges. Having to leave to pick up the yk since it's on a platform was definitely not this map's finest hour though. The worst part is probably the lack of ammo for the heavier weapons. There might be some in secrets but let's just say that the vast majority don't stand out meaningfully. Which made all the little Caco clouds and Arachnotron gaggles repetitive and stupid.

Ending is ok, I guess, even if I can't really understand why the Cyberdemon teleports around when he doesn't teleport behind your location. Strange why it doesn't look more like a helipad or airstrip though.....

There's no doubt this was an impressive map for its time of release. Krause tries some new things with teleportation that kind of work, but aren't emulated these days with good reason when you think about it. If nothing else, it can't really be called disposable

NiGHTS108 · April 27, 2022

MAP07: Moon Fortress

Kills: 89%

Items: 63%

Secrets: 0%

Time: 7:49

Alright, lets get the elephant out of the room, I, too, am not entirely sure why Scythe II hell almost just appears out of nowhere, even if you can see it at the end of last map, it doesn't make much sense because this could have been a tech base, I suppose, anyway this map is awesome! Cool yet inconsistent visuals aside, it's basically just a completely linear plough to the finish line, and I dig stuff like that, it is surprisingly challenging, what with that dense enemy placement and not exactly boat loads of health, despite cool moments like the blue key fight, the first big Suicide Bomber ambush and the tense Hell Knight staircase, the highlight of the map easily is the final fight for me, it's very similar to the great hall fight in Micro-Slaughter MAP13, however much much more evil and constricted, every second with your finger off the BFG doubles your chances of dying here, I'm not even sure what monsters are here, short answer: A lot, this map is great, overall I think it's carried a decent way by the final fight, but what a fight it is!

Grade: A

Difficulty: A+

MAP08: Fuck It, Let's Blow Up The Moon

Kills: 81%

Items: 84%

Secrets: 25%

Time: 5:10

Another brilliant map to close out the non-secret maps of Lunar Laceration, this one isn't quite as long as Moon Fortress but it still can pack a punch! Watch out for the Cyberdemon quick draw at the start of the map for the BFG, then head downwards to the base facing Arch-Viles, Revenants and Imps, I'll admit it can be surprisingly difficult clawing your way down to the base, especially since you're once again not really living in BFG heaven, once you get there, fight your way through the base and find the computer room where you can blow up the moon! I'm not sure why Doomguy would exactly want to blow up the moon, maybe too many demons, maybe it's a TNT2 type deal, but it's not like I pay attention to the lore in the modern games, so I say it's fine! Out of all songs to end a wad on, I will admit the Ducktales NES moon theme was not one I expected, but it weirdly sort of works here? Yeah, not sure, claw your way out of storage and deal with this surprisingly threatening Arch-Vile ring with a yellow key right in the middle, after that run up the hill behind the yellow door, blast anything that gets in your way, nuke a Cyberdemon guarding your way home, and it's... almost... time for curtain call

Grade: A

Difficulty: A

kalaeth · April 27, 2022

I just found out about this, but there's still enough days! (or not, since I won't be around a computer on friday but, let's see what I can do!)

As always, ITYTD, saves.

I'll start with..

Darkstar :

Oh, it starts at level 5. I was wondering if the wad hadn't load. Uuh, red floor on the moon! And a shotgun to start us off. Lot's of imps, some steps up more ammo,more imps, uuh, I like the sign! Single-shotty a manc not so much. Even less with the chainguners roaming around. Dead to the revs.

Next try. This time I'm lucky enough to have a chaingunner step outside so I can go and face the manc with the chaingun instead. Done, next.. Going from the back of the hangar I get to kill the chaingunners, grab their weapons and get rid of the spider. Now.. Oh! The SSG, nice. Kill the revs, kill some cacos, reach the end and advance through the chaingun infected warehouse to reach the blue key. A couple of revs show up to play, so do more chainguners and then, blue door. Chaingunners keep popping up! As do a couple cacos and lost souls and eventually I have to drop, and then spot the RL placed in a convenient place to get rid of a trio of mancs. After that the path is down again, a couple of revs, some HKs, a sudden AV and another drop to a switch. It lowers a lift, and up there a PE and a few cacos and now.. A drop to a switch and the blue armor, it seems. Press switch, grab armor, remove spiders, enter, kill the imp and the chaingunners, then back to the lift to go grab that soulsphere. And a BFG! Back up and I find myself in the generator room. Another secret and the green armor. Back to the red door, since I can't yet go to the yellow door, it's more boxes!I had no idea warehouse parkour was a thing. Down there we find the first shotgunner! And the second, the third, a few chaingunners, HK, lost souls, a pair of ledgy revs and another lift. A bit more parkour, the plasma! With a side dose of archville. And tomatoes. Now that the YK is mine, back to the door. Enter, another secret! And then, I'm leaving the base, but there's still time for another secret, a blue sphere. And then the exit! But a few spiders and a cow are there too.

Having no cells and nearly no rockets means it's time for the SSG. And then.. I'm one secret short.. And that secret is a pillar that won't come down or give you anything, I just had to press it in the correct place, apparently.

So that was 39:59 of darkstar, 100% Kills, Items and Secrets. Cool map, now I'm gonna go and have lunch

Back for Lunar Laceration,

MAP 01 - Crash Landing :

Our ship got thorn to shreds and I alone survived! Up the crater what seems like a bathroom, where I grab a green armor and a few shells, then into a cave, and after that the shotgun! Out the other side, up, up up and a plasma zombie! Then it took me a while to manage to press the switch, for some reason, but finally the red key came down and a caco showed up! Plus a few other random monsters. Opening the red bars a few plasma zombies show up from behind and imps ahead. Before entering I pick up the secret berseker, surprise plasma from behind took me a little live so I went back and picked some health and then, finished.

100% K/I/S, 0 deaths, 9m23s

MAP 02 - Biolabs :

We are now inside, and with a few enemies dead, time to enter a door. Some steps and into a big open space filled with un-nice people shooting at me. I kill most from outside but then I must go in and kill the plasma zombies. Switch, blue key and a new zombie, a doom guy look alike. Blue door, chaingun, switch. Oh, it's a lift! And suicide bombers! I really like this guys (that I've met before in Fall of Society). Going back notice a open window, jump into it and we 'port into the courtyard with a blue 'sphere. Back and into the red door we saw at the start, and the biggest trap! I killed them all and jump into the exit.

100% K/I/S, 0 deaths, 8m13s

MAP 03 - Venturing Outside :

Now we are outside! First a pinkie and some zombies plus a pair of plasma f5ckers that gave me a beating but didn't kill me. Pressing the switch we get some black pinkies (blackies?)! Switch, and we go down, and finally, the SSG! With a small trap to accompany it. Switch and we are back to the start. Switch and on one side a HK on a corridor, on the other side a canyon. I don't want to go inside yet, so out into the canyon. A trap as we reach there and another after grabbing the red key. Pressing the red switch didn't do much so it's time to go inside. Quick side trip into a blue sphere secret, and inside we go. The blue key is inside. And traps, more traps. Outside, switch, ambush. 'Sphere and a door that I'll bet has a final ambush. Rocket launcher, switch. Final ambush, I rationed the rockets, getting rid of chaingunners first, SSG for most imps and plasmas and then finally rockets into the cacos and.. That's that.

100% K/I/S, 0 deaths, 13:36

a cigarette break now, take advantage I'm outside before entering the habitation zone. It's frown upon to smoke inside buildings this times.

MAP 04 - Habitation Zone :

So we actually start outside, mow down a few zombies, a single rev and then a terminator baron shows up! And he brought tomatoes! Done, now into the water, switch, lift and inside a small room we kill everything and.. some bars come down, blocking the switch and popping an AV! After killing everything, again, and the AV, then switch to open up the switch to lower the lift. Blue armor, and I die to the revs and the spider. And it's again from the start. Ouch, a dead to the cacos. Third time. I forgot to mention that now we have black imps too. Ok, the room that killed me the last time has been cleared. Oh, the upper part had more things to kill, including a PE. All dead, blue key, blue sphere, jump, blue bars. And down we go! And down I go, the AV locked me inside the small corridor with the black imps behind.. This next time I run outside in a flash, and then spew rockets at the AV until he dies. Then it's just me going back for the secret, and into the exit!

100% K/I/S, 3 deaths, 9:29

MAP 05 - Moonbase Blitz :

I die less than half a minute into the level, with 25 kills. Ok, I have to find a path..This time I rocket the terminator barons and then find out there are two soulspheres right next to the start to help out with the crowd. Important notes : kill the spider fast, try and leave a blue sphere for after. Grabbing the RL releases another ambush, and I'm just guessing but I'd say the blue key won't be free either. It actually pretty much was! I go grab the blue sphere and now.. Ok found the path but now I have to go down. So I jump! Clear it all and now.. Switch. Lift, yellow key! Yellow bars, teleport. Oh. That's a lot of rockets. Ah, that is why. Clear all that and now.. Ok, to a side there's building that I entered and went back out since I didn't press the other switch. I do it now, giving me a pair of teleports, I jump into a random one and I'm up here. First closet unharms itself as I explode one of the bombers. Second closet a bit harder. Third closet with the revs and spiders.. I plasma all to death and then find a secret exit? Ah. Evil fake secret exit. Glad I saved. Ok, so back into the building. Kill all, switch, jump down and.. Oh. A megasphere. Switch! Oh, ok the megasphere made me fear a worst ambush. Oh, I see, it's the one outside I should be scared of. Done. Red key is mine, back to the teleport. Switch, a platform shows and I can cross. Open the door, blue sphere, save, switch. And I survived! Switch, switch and the AV throws me outside the window! and then kills me from away?! Damn. Next try it's done. But now I'm missing a few secrets.. Like all but one. Found one, rockets and cells. Secret plasma gun. And finally another plasma gun. And now.. Oh, the exit is damaging? If that's the case I rather exit on the psychedelic exit. Ok... neither exit exits.. So? Oh well. I'll play more tomorrow, pistol start it from the secret level,I guess.

100% K/S, no idea about items since I don't have it on the automap, about 28 minutes.

Edited April 27, 2022 by kalaeth

baja blast rd. · April 27, 2022

Moon 2000 by Michael Krause

Here the depiction of the moon is really abstract, and not a lot about this is obviously moon-like. On the surface it's more just a big ol' tech base. But I think that Krause, like in Dark Star, gets so much mileage out of the large scale, the custom sky, and the unfamiliar recombinations of very familiar textures that everything has a distinctly otherworldly feeling and I'm buying what the look is selling.

The architectural plan -- rectangular spaces with tapered corners, simple inset and layering patterns, more complex rooms being bendy combinations of 90- and 45-degree angles -- reminds me a lot of the look of something like Resurgence. It's an architectural style and scale that evokes "slaughter" to a modern player, but the bodycount is pretty low at just 200, and the map is so big that amounts to a very diffuse spread of enemies you scuffle with usually a few at a time. To keep things spicy I started doing fancy things with the BFG: like firing the ball at a distant monster and then using the tracers on some completely different group in another room.

Pretty sedate, maybe, but then again it's not like this was meant to be too dynamic. The big scale, the emptiness, and the bright blue sky all amount to a sensation of drifting. There are parts that vaguely feel like being in a space station or ship of some kind. That the map slot has been shifted to map06 for the eerie, contemplative "In the Dark" doesn't seem accidental, but when I replay parts of it in my head, it happens upon me that a custom MIDI that is synthy and slowly evolving would have been a perfect fit.

Lunar Laceration by finnks13

This along with Man on the Moon and Dark Star were my main reasons for starting the club. In Lunar Laceration's case it's a minisode (moonisode) not a lot of people have played. Adventures of Square e2, Tarnsman's Projectile Hell e2, and Nova III e3 were episodes I was thinking of, and are all good, but I thought it would be strange to play just one episode of something, and the full wads are more of a DWMC scope. For MBF21, I am playing in GZDoom 4.7.1, UV, pistol starts, saves.

map 01: Crash Landing

The Lunatic inspiration is in plain sight, but so are the little deviations: the more oldschool Doomcute touches (crashed spaceship ... detached storage bin, or something, containing a green armor). I love the beefed-up pistol; being able to gib a zombieman is really fun. I appreciate the strandedness the terrain evokes, how you're ringed by a giant moon sea and the emptiness stretches around you and the Earth sky looms above you, eating an entire horizon. (I keep mistaking this red star blip in the skybox for a lost soul -- literally shooting at it instinctively once.) On the flipside, the SP_ROCK is kind of ugly honestly; the similarities to the moon rock, both being similar white-grey-black, make how their art styles clash more pronounced. Lunar Laceration's liking for cheeky traps becomes evident not too long after the introduction of the plasma zombie, which hits hard but goes down in a shotgun blast. Crash Landing's distinct gaemeplay wavelength, apart from that trappiness, is that it gets mileage out of just about every low-tier monster in the wad -- at least the ones we currently know of. This is a nice intro, flows slicky and sets the tone for what is coming next.

map02: Biolab

Stop two on the moon tour is a bio lab, which I'm sure has seen way better days in the research department. Seriously, these trees? Some biolab.

The layout, two forks that loop around a central hub, all interiors, reminds me loosely of Lunatic map02. And similarly, it's our intro to arguably the two most devious custom monsters. here The blue key trap, which unleashes a point-blank closet rocket zombie right after their more formal introduction, is brilliant; that rocket zombie is easy to flee from, but all that does is sends you into the sights of two plasma zombies while a few imps play distraction. These rocket zombies don't hit quite as hard as the player's rocket launcher, but you're too fragile to want to find out either way. And I have to admit I don't love suicide bombers in most wads outside of Valiant and Nihility -- they are tricky to use without veering into obnoxious territory. I don't think Lunar Laceration dodges all the usual pitfalls, but more on that later, because they are fun in this map, especially when you shoot one and they gib another type of zombie unlucky to be standing nearby.

The battle immediately after this lift is one of Lunar Laceration's trope-ish setups that I'll neutrally call a multivector clusterfuck. After the lift rises, every direction you dash, you're going to bump into something dangerous: a rocket zombie turret there, a plasma zombie here, a revenant in really close quarters all the way back there. The setup is engineered so that you can't quite hole up in one spot too easily; clear out one pocket of space and other monsters are likely to converge on you and push you out.

LadyMistDragon · April 27, 2022

Moon 2000 by Michael Krause

I think I have to agree with Nights108 on this one. Incredibly spread out with impressive rectangular designs and what's largely a collection of monitoring equipment but without quite the action to compensate and there's even less a sense of the existence of stand-out encounters. I do like how enemy sound effects from Quake, Heretic, and maybe Quake II were pilfered for the foes that you encounter here. I also like the impressive custom sky used here to great effect. Otherwise, this basically is a monitoring facility with various blue textures seemingly everywhere, along with that ugly industrial sandstone-colored texture that to me anyways screams lack of inspiration as much as STARTAN. At the same time, I really like the concept of entering the experiment room to pick the blue key up. In reality, no one would hide a teleporter behind a computer panel in front of a chair of course, but no matter, at least the teleport sound effect was culled from somewhere else.

You probably wonder if we're ever going to see any sign of the Moon. Well, we do eventually. There's a large outdoor area where you can pick up a BFG, consisting of large rocky outcroppings it is somewhat tricky to navigate your way around. And I guess the ending airstrip is too, though it does start to rather pile on the heavies, though they are again quite spread out.. Oh, well, at least I found a few more secrets than in the previous map (zero in that case), so I wasn't so hard up on rockets for the finale

baja blast rd. · April 27, 2022

map03: Venturing Outside

After the worldbuilding, Lunar Laceration has a pair of abstract maps, mostly built around nondescript bases and valleys. The going combat theme in Venturing Outside seems to be monster parties; every major encounter throws a stew of species at you, and lets you play around with the infighting interactions and such that can result from the combinations. I love using the suicide bombers as sort of roaming improvised weapons, which is very potent in the dual-key battle outside -- really satisfying to blow off a chunk of HP from a bunch of pinkies (greenies), hell knights, revenants, or blow other zombies to bits.

As with every early game map, we get another monster in the mix. The Nightmare Demon isn't that great I'd say. Too much added HP, not a lot of added danger, so it is underwhelming, although the HP isn't too big of a deal immediately because...

The beefed-up bullet damage carries over to the chaingun too, and it just melts things. You're going to want to supplant the SSG with the chaingun in how you value weapons. Its painstun capabilities plus buffed damage suit Lunar Laceration's claustrophobic, high bodycount monster use so much better. This becomes pretty obvious in the map-ending multivector clusterfuck. The SSG and SG are inverted in priority -- pressing '3' gets you the shotgun first -- which also makes it slow and awkward to use the SSG. I find that unpleasant when I actually want to use the SSG, though.

map04: Habitation Zone

One little regular mistep that could be fixed to improve visuals: texture-flat matching. It doesn't have to be exact but a brown surface on a chrome wall looks really mismatched.

Habitation Zone is all about crossfires and these precise combinations of monsters that feel like something out of a Ribbiks map but with the new custom beasts. Despite its low-key look and modest enemy count, the encounter design is airtight enough to make it a contender for my favorite overall map in the set.

Speaking of custom beasts, here we get the cybruiser, which I was expecting. Compared to Valiant's this version is more of a persistent bruiser -- near-baron HP but it does have a weaker rocket (still don't want to get hit by one). The toxic imp has about double imp HP and fires a burst of two baron projectiles, and consider that these are used as often as low-tier monsters would be, they play out as the second-rudest custom monster in the whole wad, behind only the suicide bomber of course.

The blue key building's forced-entry encounter shows how brutal these toxic imps can be, as you're backed into a corner with four of them bearing down on you along with some revs and hell knights, and fleeing only exposes you to two ledges of crossfire too. They are also employed at the dual-archvlie encounter to push you out of your hiding spot and bait you to flee. (You really don't want to flee.) One of the joys that expanded rosters afford is introducing you to minimalist species combos all over again. I know what it feels like to battle a couple imps and a revenant or an archvile and a hell knight, but how about a cybruiser with a few cacos, or a revenant and a suicide bomber. It's fresh, and puts a spotlight on their mechanics and subtle strengths and weaknesses. I appreciate the emergent scenarios that arise out of all these combinations. In the blue key encounter itself, there is an archvile that threatens to rez some mancs; and its chaingunner entourage turns out to be a valuable weapon against it, easily distracting it, if you want to boldly take on the vile without worrying about the turret cybruisers that see most of the ledge and complicate trying to maintain a safe "middle" distance.

finnks13 · April 27, 2022

48 minutes ago, baja blast rd. said:

The SSG and SG are inverted in priority -- pressing '3' gets you the shotgun first -- which also makes it slow and awkward to use the SSG. I find that unpleasant when I actually want to use the SSG, though.

Since you and @NiGHTS108 mentioned it in your playthroughs, I should say I have no idea why this happens and it's completely unintentional since it doesn't happen in dsdadoom and Woof! which were my two primary testing ports. I assume it's due to the GZDoom compatibility patch, since I had to make a custom playerclass to get the pistol working correctly so that might have messed up the order for the other weapons, though I don't remember changing anything beyond inheriting the existing player class and adding the buffed pistol as the starting weapon. I don't have any experience with ZDoom modding and my thought with the patch was "make sure it doesn't crash and leave a suggestion for people to play in a different port" but I can't excuse the lack of testing the patch went through as anything but laziness on my part.

EDIT: From looking through the wad and doing a small bit of testing, it's a mistake on one line of the DECORATE code that seems to cause this - if you're not done with your playthroughs and want to fix it, swap the position of "SuperShotgun" and "Shotgun" in line 21 of the DECORATE lump in the wad and it should stop happening, I'll try to upload a fixed version soon.

Edited April 27, 2022 by finnks13
done some investigating

sandwedge · April 27, 2022

Clearing up the last of the vintage moonwads, and boy is this vintage. It's aged like a fine... well, a fine silver metal gradient texture pasted everywhere.

Played in GZDoom on Ultraviolence, no deaths. This was made in 1998 and is set in the distant, futuristic world of the year 2000, where moonbases have walls made of the worst metal gradient texture known to man. You might need a computer stronger than a P200 to run it. Actually, this is a pretty typical late 90's sprawling techno-moonbase with tons of open space. I mean seriously, you could probably fit some huge slaughter encounters in rooms where you're fighting like 3 mancubi. Though mancubi would need quite a bit of open space in a workplace setting, for sure. The enemies also make Quake sound effects which is kinda funny for a laugh. MMMHHHMMMMM. I actually wish there were more Quake sound effects in here, like the weapons, which I think works better in Doom.

Anyway, I played thru Lunar Laceration next and had a great time. The final few maps could be quite a challenge in places. Also lol at that shotgun issue, that actually plagued me during the run and I was trying to figure out if it was an issue on my end, since I've had that happen with messed up mods/saves. I suppose switching to the pump shotgun first was one way to up the difficulty slightly! 😅

kalaeth · April 27, 2022

Ok, back for a bit more. I IDCLEVed to map 06.

MAP 06 - Searing Core :

So after punching a few bad boys, we get to grab a chaingun and a SSG. With those in hand we teleport to the red key, teleport back, kill the newcommers, red bars, teleport again and GZDoom crashed. Red bars and GZDoom crashes again. And I realize I was playing with the wrong GZDoom! So back to

MAP 05 . And now I notice that the terminator barons weren't firing rockets and so the other doom guy looking guys are likely rocket zombies? Yup. rocket zombies. ANd now yes! I finished map 05 by the secret exit!

100% K/I/S, 20m04s, didn't count deaths but there where many.

MAP 09 - The Cyber Slaughter-o-Matic-5000 :

So I pick up the shotgun and a backpack and I fall down. Then I step back to dodge a termi-baron rocket and find myself protected by a pillar. I keep using it to cheese the fight, lowering it and picking up whomever enters one by one, until I get tired of it and enter the arena. There's a button marked 1, so I kinda guess where this is going. Save. Ok, 1 was explosive. Let's press 2! Ok, the RL and the SSG. 3? Oooh, this was actually fun! 4 brings a set of AVs and cacos. Kill the AVs before they can ressurect much, then focus on the cacos, then switches. And then I missed the BFG and went armed with only a RL and the SSG and died. So. From the start!

This time I'll save after each switch. He says but doesn't save. Ok, next time I saved. And then didn't die. Still, saved, caught the BFG, teleport!

So obviously, the trick here is to keep running! And shooting. Which I managed to do. So all enemies are dead!

100% K/I/S, 10m32s and I forgot to count the deaths but I think it was 3?

MAP 06 - Searing Core (again) :

So, yadda yadda, teleport! A terminator baron (T-Baron from now on) rises from the lava, which I feel is a nice mirroring of the scene in T-2, then switch and a few imps and blinkies show up, next switch, lowers the blue key and a teleport to the BFG. On about the tenth time I managed to grab the megasphere, save, switch. Kill the cyber, kill the revs, grab the YK, yellow bars, up some steps and the exit is there! But.. I'm missing the secret soulsphere and one enemy. Ah, there was a single plasma zombie walking around. The secret makes sense but I'm not sure how I'd reach it without using jump unless it's a rocketjump kinda thing?

100% K/I/S, 7m34s, no deaths. This time.

MAP 07 - Moon Fortress :

Medieval looking castle on the moon! A bunch of blackies and a snipping rev greet me. Opening the door, a T-Baron, niches with chaingunners and mancs tell me this won't be a easy castle to conquer.
But right now hunger conquers my stomach. I'll continue tomorrow.

LadyMistDragon · April 27, 2022

Man on the Moon

by Yugiboy85

Oh, god, this map....I knew from looking at rd's post that this was going to take quite a long time (1500+?? Does Miasma even have that many?!?).

Thankfully, this map is far more akin to something like the average Darkwave map (and it turns out Yugiboy's French! hmmmm) than something conceived by the monstrous torniquet. The visual design draws its greatest influence from skillsaw though. The crisp, clean visuals and general sense of interconnectiveness is probably the greatest evidence of this. And speaking of the visual design, it's clear how far that's come since the 20 years Michael Krause has so far gone silent. (like he probably hasn't permanently, eh who cares, gotta go, gotta go right now!). There's far more of an effort being made to ensure that every section of the base looks separate and distinct.

In addition to the visual presentation, the sound effects have also received an overhaul utilizing sounds you've probably heard in many modern Doom wads and the human enemies have all had their sprites replaced to presumably fit more with the sci-fi theme. There's no story though so just stick that shit back where it..oh, I guess there was really nothing there.

Now a few words on the fights. There's actually very little that I would call full slaughter. Yes, there are plenty of locations where you're supposed to rocket Imps and fight off massive teleport mobs but this map generally doesn't play its strongest cards right away. Instead, you'll come across groups of Imps, Pinkies, and other monsters in some open area or another while hitscanners make your lives utterly miserable, or at least they would if you didn't start blasting like you're muthafuckin' Frank Reynolds. There were some occasional spots where it took a few seconds to spot them, though I was only killed by chaingunners twice so I guess I wasn't that bad. In the field that leads to the blue key, I spotted the chaingunner and his partners almost instantly and completely avoided damage from them (it's the one with the secret at the other side of this depression).

It was the early fights I liked the best, which is only natural, I suppose. Try to take the plasma rifle in an early location after being handed a two-pronged attack and you'll be teleported to an isolated area with some mini-towers. Pushing a switch unleashes a group of Revenants, along with an Arch-vile, who killed me once. I suffered another death from an Arch-vile not too far from here as well.

There's also a place in the northeast below some towers with mancubi and an arch-vile that contains full on-slaughter: Imps, Pinkies, Hell Knights, and Revenants are all stuffed together in this tiny hallway. Try to blast through here as efficiently as possible because there's an Arch-vile in the back. Shooting the Arch-vile is what you'll want to do, and maybe you should. Or you could continue and come into a tiny chamber with a Cyberdemon, along with hitscanners and some Imps blasting at you from the back window outside. Perhaps the only combat puzzle of this map, you basically have to get all the Rev running through here whilst firing enough rockets so they don't overwhelm you and eventually, most of them will be killed.

A word on the Arch-vile placement here, Yugiboy leans on some rather sadistic placements for at least 4 of the Arch-viles like the one mentopned above. I admit this probably isn't one of my strengths since the instant they're surrounded by monsters, I charge forward at times when that's not the wisest action to take.

I had quite a bit of trouble finding the yellow key. I have no idea if hitting that one switch near the blue key lowered the barrier with the switch which allows you access to said area, but it wouldn't be too surprising. If I turns out I was missing that room for 20 minutes though, more fool me.

Or maybe said switch lowered the barrier around the green key, which you need to pick up the BFG but not before engaging in a massive secret fight with something like 3 Arch-viles in a darkened and lowered room. I'm not sure, but there was plenty of room here and it wasn't too hard.

Now the final fight does it's best to be cinematic...and sort of succeeds. It's a little awkward, but its still large scale enough for an epic conclusion, where you have to fight a boss of sorts in order to open the chambers which allow you to access the exit. Speaking of which, Yugiboy gets VERY cheeky with the Arch-viles here, teleporting one if you open the exit and also one right in front of the exit after some zombie rocketing fun. The little Styx-inspired boat adds a humorous tone at the end, presumably connected to the next map in the series.

It's hard to say whether I would've picked this one for a Cacoward. Still, there's no doubt that Yugiboy has crafted an incredibly impressive map with suitable scale for the kind of combat presented here. It's honestly quite surprising how well he was able to make largely non-BFG gameplay work, yet make a player feel so much better for finding it. Unlike some people (*cough @finnks13 *cough) running out of ammo will never be a serious worry, and I hardly worried about running out because of how much was really around. Worth the hour and a half it will likely take you to complete.

Edit: After looking through @baja blast rd.'s post again, I realized I may have picked the harder path first. In my defense, it was literally the most obvious one with the blue path being not far behind, and let's not talk about the yellow path.

lmd_manmoon_demo.zip

Edited April 28, 2022 by LadyMistDragon
added an archvile bit

NiGHTS108 · April 27, 2022

MAP09: The Cyber-Slaughter-O-Matic-5000

Kills: 99%

Items: 100%

Secrets: 100%

Time: 11:11

Alright, now THAT'S a name to remember

This map is a blast, it's composed of only two major rooms but I find it a nice secret map under a twinkling hideous sky, the first is pretty fun, I like how you can't immediately kill the increasing Cybruisers right away so you're forced to manoeuvre well to avoid them, look out for the Arch-Viles and Pain Elementals when you try to leave, Cyber-Slaughter feels like a bit of a revamp of 1010011010 from Speed Of Doom in a few ways, more specifically in the second half of this map, you don't get as much health and ammo here as in that map so try not to be too cocky, after dealing with the horde of snipers and ground troops, get ready to deal with I think ten Arch-Viles? They're not so scary if you have enough rockets but if not, say goodnight, I really like this map, great stuff

Grade: A

Difficulty: A+

- FINAL THOUGHTS -

Lunar Laceration is fun, I like it, I don't think it puts it's best foot forward but overall I think it wraps up well with a bunch of solid maps, creative MBF21 usage and some killer MIDIs, it's not my favourite wad in the world but for being made in just a month or however long NaNoWADMo is, I think it came out exceptionally well as a jolly Skillsaw experience that isn't afraid to go hard on the player near the end, so it always feels like the wad is moving forward, my final grade is an A-! As for difficulty, it gets off to a slow start but has some pretty god damn hard maps at the end, so let's call it a B for good measure

Lunar Laceration ranking

Spoiler

07: Moon Fortress :)
09: The Cyber-Slaughter-O-Matic-5000
08: Fuck It, Let's Blow Up The Moon
04: Habitation Zone
01: Crash Landing
06: Searing Core
03: Venturing Outside
02: Biolab
05: Moonbase Blitz

-

Lunatic

By Skillsaw

MAP01: One Small Step...

Kills: 100%

Items: 67%

Secrets: 0%

Time: 3:38

Okay, between this and Vanguard's Overgrown Sepulchre, I think it's safe to say Skillsaw took a while before the Wolf Warps and Subway Sandwiches of the world, One Small Step isn't a bad map, the MIDI is crispy and it deserves some credit at the very least for inventing the iconic Skillsaw moon, but in the way of combat there really isn't anything significant to talk about at all, all I really recall is heavy shotgunning and this neat little part where you get in a tight space with a few Pinkies and Revenants, but that's the only thing Skillsaw does to spice this map up, this is easily the most forgettable map in this episode

Grade: B-

Difficulty: E

Edited April 28, 2022 by NiGHTS108
You ever forget to write a chunk of a sentence?

LadyMistDragon · April 28, 2022

Making sure to save the best for last (in a manner of speaking because this was 2011), we're now on to Paul DeBruyne's breakout entry, Lunatic! Cool upbeat music and a clear infatuation with the setting most definitely shine here. Although I feel like Vanguard was probably better received since it was a megawad with more extensive dehacked work, I don't think this is viewed as having any weakness like Aeturnum or whatever. Let's go!

Map 01: One Small Step....

The outdoor opening area contains all of the classic skillsaw tropes: an opening circular area, casual and relaxed use of verticality, and a get-up-and-go style that'll keep most players from falling asleep. Although I have no idea how Paul got to this from Aeturnum (I don't think many people play Stronghold these days and the ZDoom megawads have been completely forgotten from the sound of things) the fact remains he is quite self-assured at this stage.

This map isn't too challenging, admittedly, but I doubt that was the point to be fair as much as easing the player in. Ammo is rather tight though, and you'll need the berserk pack here. You'll probably see me attempt to punch a few pinkies and spectres that were failing horribly to attack the Imps on the ledge above them. There's 1 Revenant but I was quite prepared for them as you can tell. The little teleport trap near the switch which reveals the red key was slightly spicy but nothing that anyone can't handle.

I didn't even turn out to need the armor secret, revealed by pushing a revealed switch when you climb atop a forklift. Like most skillsaw maps, the secrets are simple, yet strangely tricky to find. Overall, this is a cool opener, but don't come in expecting Navajo Pipe Dream from Ancient Aliens. Would I rather play this over one of the most mediocre Back to Saturn X 1 maps? Ehhhh....that might be less boring, but I'm not sure.

Map 02: Space Weapons Research

Well, my opening impression is quite bad. Small, square rooms with STARTAN? Yeah, although the difficulty takes a definite step up, and there is a little outside vista at one point. The first key trap was quite well-staged, and can be used to start some infighting, although you get enough shotgun shells that it doesn't really matter what you do.

This map also introduced two kinds of custom enemies, marking the first experiment of Paul DeBruyne into adding enemies that successfully supplement the additional roster. The plasma soldier fires plasma as you might guess, but they aren't massively threatening and drop bullets for some reason while the rocket guys are utilized to incredibly deadly effect, though probably not so much if you can actually find the secrets. And believe me, I tried! It's quite amusing to me I didn't bother picking up the combat armor near the beginning until I was nearly at the end. Otherwise, I don't think there's much else to say

lmd_lunatic_1-2.zip

kalaeth · April 28, 2022

so, MAP 07.

I'm inside the fortress, in a library when I resume play. To the side of the pool of blood a silluette of chainguners. I go at them with rockets, kill them, turn to the manc and somehow kill myself. Ok, that's twice that it tells me I killed myself but this time I wasn't even shooting at the manc!Oh maybe I should put the music lower, there were bombers behind me! Ok, nice. This once I did it. And then.. Spiders and oooh cool, everyone is watching the mass! And it makes perfect sense that the priest is the AV : he can bring them back from the dead! I'd believe a priest that ressurected a friend of mine. Then it's down and outside, to grab the BSK and deal with a mild ambush, and it's back inside now. Blue door, some evil stairs, and I forgot I was writing this until I reached a big banquet room that slowly fills with every thing the game has to throw at me. I die there, but managed to clear it on the second go. Not sure if it's from playing all that slaughter recently, but truth is I didn't find it too hard.

100, 98, 0 K/I/S, 3 deaths 16:04

I forgot the secret! Ups.

MAP 08 - Fuck it! Let's blow the moon.

I know the feeling doomguy. We start inside the fortress still, and grab a megasphere , cells, a BFG and are faced by a big bad cow with side dishes of revs cacos and a manc. Switch, bridge, door, suicide bomber, mancs, revs and both kinds of imps are ready to blow me to bits. They failed! I, however, was extremely successful. The snow is now red with their blood and passing by a weird structure I head to the base again, where a pressure switch (!) opens the door. The a evil switch that raises a lift into the face of two mancs, an AV and a T-Baron! Lift down and it's time to press the big red button! And them! It's a run through the crate maze until the red key and out we go! I LOVE the screens ticking the time left down, I end up exiting with less than 5 seconds left!

98, 81, 0 K/I/S, 8:08

Again I forgot the secret.

So that was 1:02:24, and a really cool episode. I'll play catch up with the rest of the levels next month.

NiGHTS108 · April 28, 2022

MAP02: Space Weapon Research

Kills: 100%

Items: 39%

Secrets: 0%

Time: 4:22

Another pretty short and forgettable map that only really serves to introduce the custom enemies- DAMN IT I spoiled the gimmick!

Okay I say that like it's a bad thing, but that is pretty evidently the main purpose, the first one is introduced in a cool way though, love the mild suspense of the wall raising and the plasma rifle announced stolen, it's less effective when it happens again but I'm not sure what you'd do in a map called "Space Weapon Research", the new enemies are fine, kinda feels like they've been done a time or two too many now by future wads, especially the plasma guy, but I can't blame Skillsaw for that, they're inoffensive and chill, oh yeah and the map? It's alright and I like the pretty nice Baron usage at the start, probably more Knee-Deepish than MAP01, next!

Grade: B

Difficulty: D-

MAP03: Rocket Zone

Kills: 100%

Items: 35%

Secrets: 33%

Time: 11:00

The first map of real substance in my book from Lunatic, Rocket Zone is probably a name more associated with the iconic Rocket Zone II from Valiant at this point, but the original shouldn't be overlooked either, I like a lot of the fights here, especially the one by the first rocket and the chaotic soldier slaughter near the end, and especially the fight in the ominous pit of corpses, which was so cool it received a direct rehash in this map's sequel unlike the other fights, none of this map is particularly difficult, these are the only parts I find could kill you, all the other monsters are decently spaced out so you can manoeuvre around them and just have general freedom to run 'n' gun the whole time, I like Rocket Zone, pretty solid stuff

Grade: A-

Difficulty: C-

Also I'm kinda a dope in this recording, missing several easy progression beats like a dumbass, this map is nowhere near as long as I convey it on the video

sandwedge · April 28, 2022

Had quite a bit of fun with this one, high challenge and a couple frustrating moments getting blown to smithereens immediately after a suicide bomber ambush lol. But with saves there's no real issue, the second half definitely lacerated me more however 😂

From vid description:

Played in GZDoom blind, Ultraviolence, Pistol Start with commentary. This is a fantastic mapset by finnks13. Be aware at the moment in GZDoom there is an issue with switching to the pump shotgun first, should be fixed with an incoming update. This does plague me several times during the run but I suppose it adds a new wrinkle to gameplay. 😂 Anyway it's supremely fun with a good bit of challenge, especially some very tight ambushes. This is enhanced by tons of new enemies enabled by MBF, including plasma wielding zombieman, beefier pinkies and those screaming exploders from Serious Sam. Those Serious Screamers will especially be a problem. Occasionally you will just get blown up in an ambush immediately from being in the wrong place, so I would suggest saving on your first playthrough. If you're not afraid of some deaths this is an awesome mapset to try and one of the best wads you can find on the moon at the moment.

Second part recorded, posting soon! :-)

baja blast rd. · April 29, 2022

map05: Moonbase Blitz

The scope and scale here brings to mind Rocket Zone II, which is probably a cliched thought, but it does have a valley to clear, lots of setpieces, an observatory-like row of buildings, and you start near a body of water.

I did find it tedious on my first playthrough. I don't know, it's not excessively long or grindy, I just got into relatively low health situations, and had to play very cautiously, which prolonged a lot of the action. Early on it plants cues that health and armor might be more generous, but then it defies those, so I ran into a bottleneck right before that valley containing the yellow key. The efficiency of knowing where everything is and what I could do as a result made the second go-around a lot smoother.

There are plenty of pretty brutal "combat puzzle" type encounters here. The red key fight is one of the roughest -- cybruisers, cacos, perched mancs, super imps, and an archvile, all in a tight space with lots of crates in the way and where taking cover always runs the risk of placing you in a narrow tract of the region that you can easily get cornered into by something. I really liked that one.

The suicide bombers are irritating in this area's fight. After hitting the switch, the first thing you need to do is immediately sprint to the far side of the room, because with even a moment's hesitation, a bomber can just waltz out of the teleporter and nuke you and he's already too close for you to react. This is one of those suicide bomber pitfalls; mappers know where they are using them, so will naturally avoid standing in positions that would be reasonable in any other context but get you a bit too close to their spawns when they exist.

I like the moxie of the secret exit just completely skipping the final arena if you want to. I decided to do the final fight again; it's a pretty fun example of layered projectile threats: toxic imps, revenants, and cybruisers all have very different projectile behaviors, so there are lots of emergent possibilities like a homing missile chasing you into a cybruiser rocket's oncoming trajectory and forcing you to cut a tight path betewen them. On top of that it's also got some cool microslaughter herding mechanics, since you can't really hang out safely in the middle, but if you hide in a safe pocket on the side after that clears up, the group will still have enough mass to threaten to corner you again and maybe force you out. It's not a sophisticated fight in terms of setup -- just monsters spawning -- but sophisticated behaviors are often possible from simple setups, so don't judge books by covers.

If you know the archvile trio is coming, and you want to avoid resurrections complicating that battle, it becomes a fun herding exercise to kill cybruisers only on one side of the L-shaped arena, so that you have the other side clear to work with.

map09: The Cyber-Slaughter-O-Matic-5000

The secret exit takes us on a trip to the Cyber-Slaughter-O-Matic-5000, which I want to say is aptly named but "aptly named" implies some level of predictability in the name. Either way it's a great name. A secret cyberspace map is one of those thematic diversions this set constantly works in while still managing to fit the general theme. The whole aesthetic -- Modwall, Silver, Compblu, Compred, some of these flashy disco-light things reminds me of a TimeOfDeath map.

In terms of gameplay, this one wasn't really my thing. The setups are roughly made. First off, again the problem with suicide bombers; in the first area there is an early fight where they spawn and if you just happen to be standing nearby, you get nuked. There aren't really even cues that time. Fine. But the real sticking point is that the teleporting is inconsistent since chaingunners can squat on a spot and block it, so you can have a bomber trailing out many moments after you think the teleporters have died down. This is bad design imo. The last encounter in the first area is a shit-ton of pain elementals into the boxy arena, with four viles that you have no cover from, but inevitably cleanup at the end gets protracted thanks to all those lost souls.

The second big area is cool if you know where the BFG and invul is. You can rush for them and powertrip the whole arena, unleashing all the separate spawns. Without that, I don't know; the monster placement philosophy is not that much different from some of the multivector clusterfucks in smaller-scale maps, sort of chaotically spreading out different factions of monsters at different spots of the arena, several in an area, without a deep concept to it. But whereas in the smaller-scale maps, those are wired to result in dynamic encounters where you can exploit opportunistic interactions, where pockets of space constantly open up and get snuffed out so you're having to dart around cleverly, that same philosophy in these bigger encounters more just results in random infighting happening and one or two pockets of space being safe while other spaces are more intractable until things get thinned down.

I like both 'difficult minimalist' and 'slaughter', but I think the author currently has a stronger handle on the smaller-scale stuff.

map06: Searing Core

Speaking of which, this one is awesome. It's a return to the more combat puzzle mold, every battle hinging on some exacting, clever combination of usually a handful of monsters, which at its most minimalist is an archvile-cybruiser tag team. It's also a rare map that explores both extremes of your loadout, with the berserk and BFG both available. You even get to use the pistol usefully in more than cleanup. Sign me up.

The core itself is this vast, intimidating space, and once again I like how this wad is consistently exploring different lunar settings instead of just sticking to the abstraction. In a way this wad is partly reminding me of Nova III's motley of moons -- and of course that one had many authors. The absence of the Earth portion of the sky gives Searing Core a more nocturnal feel even though days and nights don't work like that on the moon.

I really like how you can see into the core, including the dangerous setup you're about to tackle in there. "Being able to see what you can fight" isn't a new idea, but this sort of incidental glance, almost like one you're not supposed to have, is very unusual. It's also hilarious how pistol is more effective in that fight at the beginning, for the heavy-hitting zombie variants, than the SSG you get.

This time around the archvile in the blue key room luckily ran back into the teleporter after that descended, allowing me to telefrag it instead of having to play punch-out.

The cyberdemon encounter is a suitable climax. Getting the infights going and then booty-blasting the cyb and catching some pain elementals with BFG tracers in the process was all really satisfying. The brutality and precision of this map reminds me again of one of Ribbiks' more low-key maps, in something like JQ2 or Crumpets or the amphibian-named wads.

baja blast rd. · April 29, 2022

I'll read more of the writeups in the coming days; feel more like doing a bunch of playing and writing now though. Going to start a Lunatic playthrough too because I want to take my time with both of the sets.

There are some ways that Lunatic feels mundane by 2022 standards, but that's only because this type of high-energy popcorn gameplay -- uh "popcorn gameplay"? -- was inserted into the DNA of the modern scene largely because of wads like Lunatic and Vanguard. It's characterized by short and snappy maps; very clean, mid-fi" visuals broadly inspired by Agent_Spork's Simplicity; really loop-heavy progression where you can always see your objectives, like keys, and how to use those; and trademark high-energy cinematics in the encounters. Even simple traps are charged with this thrumming energy. It's sort of a mapset-as-Musical, with its upbeat lo-fi game BGM, and of course That Map. If I was brought into the 100 Memorable Maps group early enough to choose maps for it (instead of just doing write-ups for a bunch of cool maps I would have picked too), I'd have argued for Final Countdown (or Rocket Zone 2) instead of Candlecove.

Also, this is a five-map episode, and skillsaw's fondness of Scythe 2 isn't exactly a secret. Little question to think about: what if Lunatic were just one stop in a larger wad. Where would it go next?

episode 1: the moon

episode 2: 1980's Sweden (seems like a logical place for the Final Countdown to end up)

episode 3 (and beyond): ~~???~~ actually I know -- an IKEA

What the fuck is this post, okay

map01: One Small Step...

First off, let's marvel at the text file story.

Quote

Description : The moon's orbit was slowed due to a headon collision with a giant ball of demons.
Escape the moon before it crashes into the Earth!

This is one of the best text file stories ever.

I feel like a """hot start"""" being a lone demon active kind of epitomizes skillsaw; he has a deep closet of tricks for spurring the player into action and maintaining a brisk pace and maintaining accessibility, whereas for a lot of people "pedal to the medal" implies a big step up in actual lethality too. Okay this is just one pinky stop overanalyzing things me, but the philosophy is evident even in small choices like this. The gameplay is pretty straightforwardly fun: big crews of zombies and sergeants as immediate threats to blast away with your shotgun, lots of pinkies to enjoy your berserk, a tiny sprinkling of cacodemons and hell knights and revenants as regional mini-bosses, and our first high-octane "hold down M1" setpiece near the chaingun. I'm not sure if Lunatic was the first wad that used directional lighting this extensively, actually that really can't be possible as late as 2011, but it's a big reason directional lighting has become synonymous with the moon setting. It's a slick-looking map, especially with the small realistic touches like the flag and the crate bay, the lowering exit floor that links us continuously with map02.

finnks13 · April 29, 2022

Right, so this is going to be a lot of writing, I'm going to separate it out into various spoilers. I wanted to get my thoughts on Lunar Laceration down somewhere, I haven't properly played it since finishing the difficulty settings in early December and I think my idea of "good design" has changed a fair amount since then so I did a full playthrough of it and tried to give my thoughts on the maps, and how they came about. I figured it'd be best to have this in one big post rather than a load of smaller ones, so here it is I guess.

Lunar Laceration by me :)

General Thoughts

Spoiler

I'm incredibly proud of Lunar Laceration, even though I know it's nowhere near perfect. I don't even particularly like the name "Lunar Laceration", but you can't really release a wad that's called "SPRITESTEST.wad" can you? I had a lot of free time in October last year (the month that NaNoWADMo 2021 took place in) due to some mental health issues I was having that led me to drop out of the university course I was intending to do, and had no luck job-hunting with the degree I had already. I don't want to this to seem like I'm begging for sympathy, I just want to make it clear that I had loads of time to dedicate to Lunar Laceration and I spent most of every day in October working on it - I'm doing much better now anyway.

I was initially planning on making a three episode long set of 12 maps, that had a gothic castle, jungle temple and moon theme but on a trip to the shops one day, I thought to myself "Wouldn't it be cool if I made a massive hell castle on the moon?" and so the episodic theme was abandoned in favour of a longer lunar campaign that started with the standard techbase affair, and ended with some castles. I was planning on a 10 map long episode with 1 secret map, and I completely overestimated my ability to get that done. This is the main flaw with Lunar Laceration in my opinion, it feels like there's a couple of maps missing, and that's because there is. The original plan was to have another big outdoors-y techbase map between the current Map05 and Map06 (probably using a city layout), as well as another castle map between Map07 and Map08.

The reason Lunar Laceration is so excessively mean in a lot of places is twofold: Firstly, I was intending on making a difficult set, but since I was against a very tight schedule and didn't really get a chance to ask many people to playtest it, I was under the impression that the set was difficult, but not moreso than the ending episode of an average megawad, when that's definitely not the case! Secondly, I had been playing a lot of challenging Doom maps, as well as Super Mario World Kaizo hacks (and had been working on one of these myself) which definitely influenced my design in ways that I think are fairly obvious to people who have played a fair amount of both of these things, even if I am by no means an expert player at either of this. I think my encounter design in this wad could be most easily described as "hyperactive".

Lunar Laceration is rather unpolished, as @baja blast rd. has pointed out, there are a lot of instances of mis-matched wall and floor textures as well as there generally not being enough ammo for anyone who isn't as exacting with it as me. The vast majority of the fights here are the first iterations of them, and I didn't have much time to further refine them. I definitely could have gone back and polished up the maps, but it kind of doesn't really feel within the spirit of NaNoWADMo to me and I also really don't want to disrespect the "deadline" it gives me as it really helps me to focus on mapping. I think the obviously unpolished nature of it adds character to the wad anyway :P

Weapon and Monster Changes

Spoiler

The weapon arsenal changes were far less impactful for most people than I was hoping for, I had read a post on Doomworld a month or so before making them that I found very interesting, in that by buffing the chaingun's firerate, you change it's feel to be more of a "power weapon" like the SSG or rocket launcher when the chaingun fills a completely different role normally. I wanted to see if a similar DPS buff could keep the feel of the chaingun the same, so I buffed it's (and the pistol's) base bullet damage to 8. This is why I didn't change the sprites of the weapons (that and I didn't find any that fit the feel of the maps other than the ones used in Valiant, and I feel like I'm cribbing from skillsaw enough anyway), and I have to say that I really don't think most people would know about this buff without me explicitly saying it.

I had originally had a texture near the start of Map01 that spelled out the weapon changes, but I felt that people would see this as far too immersion breaking and annoying so I kept it to a mention in the textfile and forum post. I really regret this since this set is significantly more enjoyable if you use the buffed chaingun and most playthroughs I've seen have the player struggling while they have 400 bullets sitting in their backpack. I'm not trying to blame anyone for this, it's my fault for not making this more obvious and if I do ever revisit this, I definitely will do that. The buffed chaingun also causes all of the issues with GZDoom as the port currently doesn't check for ammo when you use the new MBF21 codepointers, and my compatibility patch to make the wad function in this port isn't very good, especially since I couldn't figure out how to make the text-screens work before my patience ran out so you're missing out on my incredible comedy there.

The monsters here were mostly inspired by Heartland and Uprising, two wads I had played in 2021 and really liked. While I did base them off of monsters found in these two wads, I did custom make everything myself, so there are some slight differences in the implementation.

TOXIC IMP - The first enemy I made, mostly as a test to see if this would work. I think this monster is a bit overtuned, two baron fireballs is wayyy too much and it probably should have been nerfed. I didn't want to use the cacodemon projectile since I didn't want to have the lack of sound from the caco's melee attack, but I also didn't want to use the imp fireball because I thought they'd be too easy. I could have made a custom projectile, but I think there's a limited amount of "new things" an average player is willing to learn so I decided against it.

PLASMA ZOMBIE - These are my favourite enemy here, I think I got the balance of them pretty much spot on and I like how they're a threat in spite of their lack of HP. I definitely spam them way too often though.

ROCKET ZOMBIE - Originally was immune to splash damage, but I decided to alter this for RC2 because it was just really weird that they couldn't die from that. They also fire the cybruiser's custom rocket that deals much less damage than the cyberdemon's.

BOMBER - These are the biggest culprits of "kaizo traps" in LL, there's a fair few instances where they're placed for no other reason than to hopefully kill a blind player to my amusement :P

NIGHTMARE DEMON - Basically the Nightmare Demon from Eviternity with a different coat of paint. These are probably the custom monster that I use the worst

CYBRUISER - I really liked the implementation of these in Heartland, with the custom rocket that deals less damage so I looked at the specific damage formula used in that wad and just used it here too. I think I probably would have ended up doing something fairly similar without this, but I figured it'd be better to just take something that I knew worked really well.

Map01:

Spoiler

This was the very last map I made for Lunar Laceration, and is the only map to be made after that name was decided on! It's a speedmap I made in 4 hours on the 31st October, I was very tired as I had been to a wedding the night before, and it was very hard to motivate myself to actually get this map done - especially the high contrast lighting, which I had grown to slightly hate doing by this point.

This map was originally meant to more heavily focused on the pistol, but my attempts to make it more interesting through buffed damage didn't really work in this aspect, so I just handed out the shotgun earlier than I was intending and just make a more fun map as a result. The slow introduction of all the custom monsters begins here, with the plasma zombie and I instantly start spamming them.

There's a little easter egg behind the techbase you enter at the end of the map, which I added after seeing a playtester go back there. It doesn't do anything, but they found it mildly entertaining.

Map02:

Spoiler

The third map made, after 03 and 05, I quite like this map though it is easily the worst looking map in the set. Just a very bland techbase. I like how it plays and I think it introduces the rocket and bomber zombies well, but I probably should have included a little outside section anyway. The secret fight is the best part IMO, the two side teleporters being slightly delayed compared to the central one was a complete accident but I thought it was funny so I kept it in.

The song is from NES Batman as @sandwedge figured out in his playthrough, I had been playing through the kaizo hack Grand Poo World 2 before making the wad and this song was featured in a level I really liked, and I really liked this song too so when I found a MIDI that sounded pretty much bang on to that, I had to use it!

Map03:

Spoiler

This is the first map I made for the project and it shows by having obviously more polished visuals than anything else here. I don't think I use the nightmare demon particularly well here, mostly just used as an introduction. I probably should have introduced the SSG a bit earlier in the map, in HMP and HNTR, it's where the blue armour is in UV and in hindsight I should have put it there on all the skills because it doesn't make a lot of the ambushes much easier, just a bit less of a slog.

Of the split path, I think the indoor section is better than the outdoors one, it's more well designed as the red key section is very easy to just leave and doesn't really hit hard. The finale of this map was meant to be the first "actually hard part" of the wad, but as long as you use the buffed chaingun, it's really not too bad. Honestly, this map is pretty dull compared to most of the other maps here but I really like it still, it's one of two maps that were actually tested before release (by @ANonThingie!) and I think it shows in how it feels quite polished in comparison to the rest of the set.

Map04:

Spoiler

This map probably has the most interesting development cycle. It's originally from an unreleased vanilla set of maps I was making, and I liked it a lot so when I was running low on time, I inserted into the wad in a panic. I think it looks significantly worse after the re-texture if I'm being honest and since I didn't have much time to redesign the fights, the new monsters aren't really introduced in a good way. This is also the reason why this is the fourth small layout, against small groups of enemies with limited weaponry in a row, I had originally intended for this to be a much grander exploration focused map, however I realised that I wasn't very good at making those kinds of maps and I gave up on that idea. If you play RC1 of the wad, it's Map12 in that since I kept the unfinished thing in the wad as a "bonus" of sorts. It's gone now cause it sucks :P

The final fight is one that worked much better in the old version of the map, the suicide bombers were chaingunners in the original version and that meant that you had much more freedom to do the intended strategy of "run away from the archviles down that direction" and the bombers make this fight a bit bullshit. The pillar on the left doesn't really help you to clear the fight, though I added it in as a place to hide while letting the bombers make their way up to you. I probably should have kept this fight closer to it's original iteration.

Map05:

Spoiler

This is, in my opinion, the best map I've ever made. It's the closest I get to capturing the fast paced nature of Lunatic's map design and combined it with combat I really liked making and playing through. I'm really happy with how it's relatively non-linear - after getting the rocket launcher, you have a lot of freedom with how you can tackle the map in comparison to pretty much every other map here. It is probably the most exhausting map in the wad due to it's length, and general intensity but that was definitely what I was going for and I don't think I'd change anything about this map going back to it. I think this is the map where the custom monsters come into their own, and features the best usage of the nightmare demons, especially in the rocket launcher fight.

The opening is probably my single favourite moment in the wad - two cybruisers immediately facing you with some pinkies blocking your escape, with buildings with bombers opening as you run past and the arachnotrons keeping you moving through streams of plasma. It came out exactly as I had hoped it would, and it was a highlight to work on and see people's reactions to.

There's some weirdness here, originally you were meant to be able to get the keys in any order, but I realised that not getting the rocket launcher would be absolutely miserable so I forced the player to get it first, but didn't remove the blue key for some reason. It does absolutely nothing.

The bomber fight in the basement of the red key building is one of my favourites, it was much harder in the first iteration of the map, but I nerfed it after playtesting revealed it to be "complete bullshit" - mostly by extending the room you're in. This fight might be a bit too close to one found in Valiant Map15, but that was completely unintentional. I was hoping to show off that archviles can resurrect cybruisers in the finale of the map, mostly as an "oh shit!" moment, since I don't really use that anywhere else in the wad. Unfortunately, people tend to miss it due to being, understandably, more worried about killing the three archviles that teleport in!

@LadyMistDragon has mentioned that my secrets feel like afterthoughts, and in the case of Lunar Laceration they pretty much are. I didn't want to fall into the trap of making the maps only possible to enjoy if all the secrets were found (as I have in the past), and I've found that the best way of doing that with a very quick development cycle is to add them in at the end of the map creation. Only Map08's secrets were planned out in advance. The secret exit was more obvious in RC1, but I made it harder to see since everyone I saw play the wad went to Map09 after playing barely half of Map05, though it does seem very much just placed in a random unmarked computer panel (It's not, there's one FIREBLU pixel there!)

Map09:

Spoiler

This map name comes from the idea that it would be funny to name "the hardest map in the wad" in the style of a contraption from Wallace and Gromit - that is the main reason why "-o-Matic" is there. I'm not really sure where the idea for this theme came from, Three is a Crowd is where I had seen the trick of using lines to raise the light level along with sector special 8 to gradually lower it again, and I had seen pictures of someone in the NaNoWADMo discord working on a map with red and blue flooring, and I thought it looked cool so I tried to use these themes together. Not sure when I decided on having FIREBLU as the sky texture but I think it works here.

I can't really defend the initial wave of suicide bombers, it's probably the worst designed fight in the wad. I knew that it was complete bullshit at the time, but kept it in with the excuse of "it's like 20 seconds into the map, who cares if it's bullshit and you have to restart?" and I don't think I would do something like this now. I saw a suggestion of removing one of the teleport spots and I think this could fix the fight to be less stupid. I still like how silly it is, but I appreciate that it's quite poorly done. This fight is the reason that the suicide bomber's health was lowered to 48 (from 60) and the shotgun's fire speed was upped by two tics - to make it very slightly more consistent. I think the rest of the fights in this first area are pretty good though, especially the fight when the stairs with demons on drop and everything wakes up - which weirdly I seem to have much more trouble with than anyone I've seen play the wad.

The final area was inspired by Speed of Doom's secret map, and I built it as if I were making a natural area, but textured using the COMP* textures and I really like how it came out visually. This area also has a rather large oversight in that I thought that the location of the BFG was fairly obvious - being visible immediately from when you teleport in, on a platform that is textured differently from the rest of the area. It's not. This area is surprisingly doable without the BFG, but it's definitely more fun with it so it's a shame that since people don't tend to replay maps that their experience isn't going to be the greatest. I am really happy with this area, it's not the deepest or most demanding encounter I've ever made but I think it flows quite well when you know what you're doing.

The archviles by the exit are a stupid joke, and I probably shouldn't have done that because while it is very entertaining for me to watch people shit themselves as 16 of them pour out, this is complete bullshit. I am very exacting with cell ammo here (even after adding 500 extra after @galileo31dos01 complained about the lack of them in RC1), which means that this blindsides you if you don't know it's coming and have been using mid-fight saves. I like how unecessarily mean this is, but this is something I would describe as a "kaizo trap" and makes sense that I'd put it in considering that's a large influence on the design of this set, but I probably shouldn't have bothered in hindsight.

@baja blast rd. has mentioned that my encounter design seems to work much better with smaller scale fights, and in the case of Lunar Laceration, I'd definitely agree. I had made some slaughtermaps before, but at this point, I was still fairly new to it and the very short timespan this wad was made in definitely shows particularly in that area of design being much less polished. This map was made in about 8 hours over 3 days, which isn't an excuse cause I didn't *have* to speedmap the wad, but I think that smaller scale stuff is much easier for me to make on a short timescale.

Map06:

Spoiler

I just can't resist making a tyson map for my wads and I think this is the best one I've done. It was meant to be a weapon-reset map inspired by a couple of early episode 3 Sunlust maps (22 & 23 specifically). The lava is there because I didn't like using the black liquid and I rely far too much on liquids for my maps visuals and I was missing being able to use them! The lava it also hints at the hellish influence that will follow in maps 07 and 08 though people don't really pick up on that and are bewildered why we've suddenly entered into Scythe 2. It's not the best map in the wad certainly, but a moon cave isn't something I saw in Lunatic or Valiant so I wanted to make one.

An idea I was going for here was that I wanted the pistol to be actually useful in this map, which is why the fight directly after getting the SSG is easier if you don't use the SSG very much. I was hoping to make the finale a bit more grand and ridiculous but I couldn't make it any more difficult than what it is without it being incredibly not fun.

Map07:

Spoiler

I remember having the idea for this map on the way to the shops, before this was an exclusively Moon themed set of maps - "Wouldn't it be cool if I made a massive gothic castle on the moon?" and so I scrapped the previous idea of three short episodes and decided to do one large one which ended with a couple of maps set in castles on the moon. This was originally meant to be an introductory map to the concept and the final battle was meant to be something in the other map I made with this theme, but I ran out of time and just made the one unfortunately, as I really like making castles and weird-tone-shift aside, I still think the idea is really cool.

The fight on the stairs is probably my favourite in the wad, with how it comes completely out of nowhere and is absolutely ridiculous. There was originally a soulsphere at the start of this fight on UV, to go along with the green armour but I thought it was too easy and got rid of it. Maybe shouldn't have done that in hindsight as I have no idea how I thought this was fair. I probably also should have been a bit more generous with cells afterwards because having to deal with the cyberdemon in the small corridor soon afterwards, without at least having the cells available to 2-shot him is not fair.

The finale was meant more as a "final challenge" before Map08 which I intended more as a victory lap than hardest map. I knew a lot of people playing this wad wouldn't like slaughter, which is why Map09 has a warning (if you're not playing in GZDoom!) and this fight can basically be won by holding the fire button down while making your way between the cell ammo stashes and megaspheres. I have no idea why I included bombers in this fight, they can randomly kill you and dying to it sucks so this is probably one of the very few changes I'm making to the gameplay before the final release.

Map08:

Spoiler

This is the only map that was planned from the beginning in full, I wanted to do an escape sequence map. In 2019, I released a wad called "The Golden Idol" and it ended with you grabbing the "idol" off of a stand and an Indiana Jones-esque escape sequence took place. It was (until the release of Lunar Laceration) the map I was most proud of making, and @baja blast rd.'s review of it really cheered me up after the very small response that wad got. Since making that wad, I wanted to do another map with this gimmick, but do it better and I decided to make the finale of Lunar Laceration because of that - and because the map name "Fuck it, Let's blow up the Moon" made me laugh :P

I originally intended the buildup to the escape sequence to be longer, but I ran out of time, and wanted to start the escape sequence off. The encounter right at the beginning of the map was meant to be the hardest part of the map, and I think it is the single hardest fight in the wad. The bombers after the fight are nothing more than unfair traps and was described by @Vile as "some shit that Serious Sam would pull" and I couldn't agree more - it's absolutely bullshit but I make no apologies for that one! The rest of the buildup to the finale is fine, but I do think it comes across as rather rushed, though I did like the little fortifications I built for the revenants.

The escape was designed in a very deliberate way - I add in secrets that aren't very helpful and waste a lot of time to get as a challenge for people who want to UV-Max the map, while keeping the actual way to complete the map pretty doable. I find that this works out pretty well in terms of setting a timelimit. You can't get away without playing quickly, though I think I give out loads of supplies to make this pretty doable. The bombers that come after the wad's only spiderdemon are there to waste your time if you're trying to 100% the map, though I should probably make the teleporter a bit more consistent. I'm very happy with the doomcute rocket, even if the timelimit means that you're not really able to appreciate it! People have consistently said that I should have used the Super Metroid escape theme here, but I really like this MIDI of the Ducktales moon theme, it really works as an escape theme for me.

I really like this one, I don't think I could have ended the wad off much better.

BONUS MAPS:

Spoiler

There are two bonus maps in the wad on the Map10 and 11 slots. You have to either just guess they're there by warping or finish the secret map in a port that actually has text screens since the "reward" for finishing Map09 is a text screen that simply says "IDCLEV10 for a bonus map!".

The first bonus map is the first MBF21 map I had made, it was intended for the secret slot of the gothic castle episode of the wad I was intending on making being very gimmicky, but I decided to throw it in here as a little bonus, even though it's not really anything special. There was originally going to be a couple more areas to the map, one using floors that killed monsters, and one final area combining the insta-kill floors and player blocking linedefs. I liked making this one since I like making castles, but there's a reason it's a bonus map.

The other bonus map is the test area I was using when developing the new monsters. I originally had a cyberdemon along with the cybruiser as one incredibly hard to notice change is that they can't infight with each other - this only ever comes up in Map09 and is barely noticeable, but it's there. This map also didn't have an exit originally which was a complete oversight on my part since I never really intended for it to be playable.

Thank you to everyone who has given Lunar Laceration a go, either before or during this club - I can't stress enough how happy I am with the reception this wad has gotten since it's by far my biggest release. Thank you also, @baja blast rd. for picking it for this club as seeing more playthroughs and reviews of my maps is something that makes mapping absolutely worth it :)

NiGHTS108 · April 30, 2022

5 hours ago, finnks13 said:

Lunar Laceration by me :)

General Thoughts

As someone who is always dying for some map commentary, you're the best Finnks

NiGHTS108 · April 30, 2022

MAP04: Super Lunarcomputer

Kills: 95%
Items: 57%

Secrets: 33%

Time: 6:58

In tone I find this one is more chillax overall than Rocket Zone, but it ends up a fair bit more difficult than that map to be honest, Super Lunarcomputer probably would have been more fitting as a MAP03 and Rocket Zone gets the penultimate slot, but I like how it's structured here, having this slower map be the penultimate one, it's neat and gets you pumped for MAP05, not a boat load of interesting fights here but it does have some time for some good ones, I like the opening fight, enjoy how you get the rocket launcher here, the way these fights connect I will admit is forgettable, just kinda feels like blue and grey Knee-Deep mostly, at least from my memory, the Doomguy sandwich on Caco, Hell Knight, Mancubus and Rocket Guy bread is pretty snazzy, even if it's a conventional "Skillsawism" it's still fun, and for as early as you can leave the final fight is overall solid, just be weary of Arch-Viles and you'll have no issues, I like this map, it's not the snappiest but has high highs

Grade: B+

Difficulty: B-

Nefelibeta · April 30, 2022

To be honest, I find those smaller mini techbases quite lovely, especially Map01 and Map02. They are pretty replayable, and also pretty cute to be honest.

Sign In

The DWMoonwad Club plays: some maps that are set on the moon

Recommended Posts

Share this post

Link to post

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Popular Posts

baja blast rd.

dobu gabu maru

baja blast rd.

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Share this post

Link to post

Join the conversation